I'll begin by saying: YMMV, of course. I'm certain there are people who will find BG fantastic even today, as its core qualities will just tick with them so well (DnD progression system and exploration.) It also does have pretty graphics, that can't be argued against, and good music, which is also a plus, buut I usually don't care about either all that much, as long as the graphics aren't completely horrendous or music utterly terrible (hello, System Shock! Thank god for volume sliders.)

As far as tactical combat goes, it just didn't feel challenging at all (played on normal difficulty,) but I don't give a rat's ass about that either, in fact I have stopped playing quite a few RPGs because of tactical combat - IMO it doesn't go too well with the genre, but there are people who love it in RPGs, so who am I to say so.

Yeah, BG translates the DnD ruleset quite well. I still do think temple of elementar evil does it better, but what the hell. At any rate, I'm not the 'mechanics' kind of guy - I don't really care what kind of mechanics the game is using, as long as they don't stand in the way of my enjoyment.

I'll answer to the 'better RPGs' bit by answering to this as well, because that's precisely where my main problem with this game lies. First of all, the story. It was kinda interesting at some parts, but it was mostly quite terrible. Oh lord, the generic fantasy realm is in grave danger, save it against the evil plot of big bad dude over there! I could live with that, if the NPC and world interactions were woth a damn: But they most definitely were not.

'Party interactions' came down to a single sentence exchanged between NPCs from time to time. There was nearly no character development of any sort. Talking to NPCs consisted of them throwing a wall of text at you and your answers were: I accept, I'm a dick or I refuse. Oh then there was goodbye. Seldom did the game give you any actual choice, let alone a dialogue. I have played the first Fallout just before playing BG, and after all the praise I have heard for BG, it felt incredibly simplistic and underwhelming: By its story, world and characters. It was bland and it was generic. The only reason why I have finished playing BG is the fantastic NPC mod and very solid exploration factor, which, in my case, could not carry the entire game by itself.

And here we are getting to how 'innovative' BG was: I'll take this straight out of SimonG's mouth, because I agree 100%. BG was to RPGs of its day what Halo of Modern Warfare is to FPS of today: It made BG accessible to a wider audience, it streamlined the genre. There was nothing innovative nor revolutionary about it. Before BG, there were games like TES: Daggerfall, Fallout, Ultima series, Betrayal at Krondor, just to name those that I have personally played (and aside from Fallout, all of them AFTER BG.) There were loads, and loads did precisely what BG, but in a more complicated and not as pretty manner. But they did do it better, or at least as far as I am concerned. If you'd like a straight parallel to BG, it would probably be Betrayal at Krondor, which had exploration, party-based tactical combat, NPC interactions and an utterly fantastic story - aside from user friendliness, it beats BG at every turn.

Bear with me, because now I'm FINALLY getting to why do I think that BG doesn't really have anything to offer today: First of all, there's BG 2, which just does what the first game, but flatout better, aside from exploration factor (I still didn't enjoy it because of the generic setting, but it improves unpon the original tremendously.) And now modern games, be it Dragon Age or Neverwinter Nights 2, just offer a better, more polished experience than the first BG. As all it was about was polish... It just doesn't really have much of a place anymore. Still, the game is most definitely not bad, and there are going to be people who are just more prone to liking it.

I already understood you did not like the game. As I said, that's fine. However, there are very many people who like myself regard it as an excellent game and a classic. I would tend to believe that people who think BG sucks are in the minority really and your comments make pretty clear you think the game sucks given all the negatives just listed from your perspective.

I do not believe you breezed through the game on normal difficulty without it being challenging at least in places. There are certain encounters starting from nearly the beginning where the odds are against you and you are also somewhat at the mercy of the dice rolls such that even when you play perfectly, things may not go so well for you. It is certainly not some simplistic clickfest. It most definitely is tactical and requires at least some finesse to win which I would call challenge, not to be confused with difficulty although some encounters could be called difficult in the game on normal difficulty. Not impossibly difficult no, but not easy either. I'm not buying that.

A lot of our differences here are matters of opinion more than fact. As such I think we'd do well to agree to disagree about this game rather than debate at great length about why it sucks or is great, etc. I loved it. You don't. Fair enough. :D

That was one of their biggest mistakes: they want to release it for tablets and then take ages to do so. It's been two months since its release now and still there's no sign of the Android version. The iPad version, on the other hand, has loads of negative reviews. To quote the last ones:


Still buggy, very very buggy

by Nightofgrim
Half the game for me is trying to get my party through doors and picking up loot. It's near impossible to click on things. Some spells still slow the game down to frame rates that make you want to scream. This is very unprofessional. All the good reviews are fan boys of Baldur's Gate. I'm a fanboy too but I don't want the greatest game ruined by these clowns.


The controls are still terrible post patch

by Zanzibar808
When swiping to move the view, half the time your character moves to where you lifted your finger and half the time he doesn't. It is very frustrating and feels very flakey. When moving the view, the character should not move at all! Extremely hard to select NPCs and dialog options need to be separated with more vertical distance so you can select them. Come on guys, this is terrible UI work. You need to design an actual tablet UI. It is hard to imagine this was worse before the patch as it is still totally unplayable, save your $10


unplayable

by SupApp
this needs to be fixed:
1) frustrating performance when casting some spells
2) no simple ability to skip intro videos

What a shame. :(

You're not actually replying to my post, are you? You found someone else's post and misquoted it :-P I have never said BG sucks. I said it doesn't hold very well in comparison with more recent games even at what it does well (it is quite apparent that you are yet to play BG 2.) And I tried to put my 'wasn't all that great even when it came out' argument into perspective, because the game is very objectively not what fans are trying to make it out to be, regardless of its quality - it's not a revolution of the genre, it was not genre's 'savior'. It was just another RPG that just got a lot of press, marketing and hype surrounding it.

If you can stand the graphics, I do recommend you give Betrayal at Krondor a try. It is, by mechanics, a very different game, but by essence it's very similar. And it has a great story and writing to boot, altho it could do with more dialogue options (it offers pretty much as many as BG, which is do / don't do a quest. There are more substancial ones along the line, but your party mostly has a mind of its own)

If you want a Baldur's Gate "prototype", try Dark Sun: Shattered Lands from 1993.
It has the same type of maps (except they are already explored which is a pity), even more unlinear and open ended, multiple solutions to problems, a more original setting, and much better dialogue options than the typical BioWarian ones.
It is turn based, but apart from that combat is similar to Baldur's Gate with much of the same spells, but with Psionics added to the mix. Unfortunately the combat is generally too easy and encounter design not nearly as good as that of BG, so for us who like tactical combat Baldur's Gate is clearly superior.

Okay, let's see here. I'll recap some of the things you've said verbatim.

"BG aged pretty badly"
"It wasn't such a great and revolutionary title even when it came out"
"exploration which is the only redeeming quality of that game"
"it has very little to offer"
"didn't feel challenging at all"
"temple of elemental evil does it better" (D&D ruleset)
"story...mostly quite terrible"
"nearly no character development of any sort"
"seldom did the game give you any actual choice" (in dialog)
"it felt incredibly simplistic and underwhelming"
"It was bland and it was generic"
"nothing innovative or revolutionary about it"
"It just doesn't really have much of a place anymore"

You also mention the game is basically irrelevant now since BG2 is "flatout better."

Then there is the humorous line where you contradict yourself and say, "the game is most definitely not bad."

After all the negative commentary I quoted above you are seriously going to tell me you never said BG sucks? Please, you have just got to be trying to fool me. lol

You clearly said exploration is the game's only redeeming quality, it has very little to offer, it isn't challenging, other games are much better, the story is terrible (sucks even?), it is bland, generic, incredibly simplistic and underwhelming, etc.

But it is definitely not bad.

Really?

Well, I guess we now need to agree to disagree on what sucks and great mean. I'm not sure what else to say here. I do think we should let this go though. lol

I have finished it. Even if it was thanks to the NPC mod that made the game way more interesting to me, the rest of the game was the same. Do you really think I would have finished something that I thought sucked? All that I've said was in relation with other titles. When looked at on its own, the game is solid, if kind of average. That I give negative commentary doesn't necessarily mean I hate the game, it just means that it leaves a lot to be desired - besides, I can't stand when someone makes BG into some sort of RPG messiah of its time when it's just ... Well, not true. It did to the genre precisely what most of this community bitches about in modern games, and there's just nothing subjective about that. Not that I dislike streamlining mind you, for the most part I love it, even today.
Thank you for the recommendation, I hope it gets re-released somewhere.

I'll remind you that you claimed the game's ONLY redeeming value was exploration. I can only assume the game had no other redeeming qualities in your mind based on that one statement alone, never mind all the others. I''d say that's a pretty clear indication a role playing game sucks if that is the only thing it has going for it, at least in the mind of the person saying so.

I think I understand now though. In your mind, Baldur's Gate does not suck. However, it has no redeeming value other than exploration and you were only able to finish it thanks to an NPC banter mod making the experience bearable. You think Baldur's Gate is definitely not bad all things considered, even with all the fault you find in it.

I will try to remember this in case you ever tell me a game is not bad because I am sure I don't want to play something that meets your definition, at least according to what I just saw here, of not bad. ;-)

Well, this is definitely a POV thing, but I think judging it by only the improvements was the right path, as the existing one is available for purchase and works on the latest OSes. Some would argue this opens it up to more people, that's possible, but I think a lot of those mod sites do "all-in-one" patches where you follow a 1,2,3 set up steps to unzip everything into a folder and get your game modded.

Judging the iOS version as a whole new game is worthwhile as it wasn't available on iOS before and their method of control input and the like are pretty important for whether the game will be enjoyable or not.

Judging Baldur's Gate as a whole for the EE is basically saying "this game has aged well"! Well, okay, but do I want to spend 20 bucks or play the copy I have (or even pick up a copy off of GOG for 1/2 of the price, on sale, or off another DD site).

Yeah, dunno, people kept telling me DA:O was hard (and to be fair, at launch some classes were horribly and brokenly unbalanced), but I found it to be a snooze fest when I finally went back and played it on PC and XBox 360 (imo, the 360 version had more challenge due to the altered view and a few other tidbits, which is the opposite of popular opinion), so really, don't discount someone's experience. They may just be used to playing hard as fuck games, they may have lucked out with a few early item drops, they may tend to explore a bit more and easily outlevel any bosses, etc.

Difficulty is subjective and it's fairly easy to break games like BG as a player as the cleverer ones will notice exploitable mechanics very early on, or just build a better party.

Well... Exactly? I think I didn't make the distinction between 'subjective' and 'objective' quite clear: For me, personally, Baldur's Gate isn't a very good game. It does a lot of things I don't quite care for, and those I do care for it doesn't do well at all. That's the subjective bit.

The objective bit is that both before BG, there were games which do pretty much what it does but better (thus underwhelming) and after BG there are games which do precisely what it does but better. What I meant by 'redeeming quality' is the only thing the original BG is distinctive when compared to those other games - a quality which may still redeem it when faced with videogame development since its release. That is pretty much my definition for how I was using the term in here, just in case of language barrier.

The objective bit is also that BG most certainly doesn't suck. Just because there are games which are better at what it does doesn't necessarily make the said game bad.

What I said is that, if the game came out today (which it did, in a sense,) it would very much deserve rating about 6/10 on actual 1-10 scale as opposed to popular 5-9. Which is what I said. What I would consider an objective rating, when compared with all the other RPGs I have played in my life, including RPGs with tactical combat.

What I also said is that BG's influence on RPGs is heavily blown out of proportion, as it didn't really do anything all that amazing or revolutionary. Now thinking about it, innovative may be, if we consider evolution of UI and user friendliness innovative for a genre itself. But it wasn't such a huge step forward, not by a long shot.

Try to alienate me, always fun. I was being polite you know.

I used to be obsessed with Baldurs Gate series. I went to play Baldurs Gate over again a half a year ago and couldn't get into the game at all. It was mostly that I used to play real time combat but now I can't stand it. It would take an act of god to get into that series again.

Gotta be one of the most overrated games out there.

"Only redeeming quality" is an overused term used by gamers, so I don't blame you for using it. However, in the most basic sense the word redeem means matching a cost with something of value. Whereas I believe, if you find the game of even average value, you would say something like an exceptional, or definitive quality of the game.

Although you did say you would not have finished the game, which for many who have paid for something would mean that you found it unsatisfactory.

Thank you for clarification :-) And yeah, I really did find it unsatisfactory. But I found Dragon's Age unsatisfactory, yet I won't say it's a bad game (altho my issues with it were actually very similar as those with the original BG now that I think about it.)

First of all: My mistake, I have overreacted a bit. I was tired and didn't quite notice the ';-)'. Second of all, do play BG2. It really didn't quite captivate me because ... Well it's just really, really hard to captivate me by Forgotten Realms. Still, it took what made BG the game it was and added fantastic party interactions and story (or... So I've been told, anyway, all I have seen of it was the great villian).